Climate talk in Peru extends far into the night on the last day

Being the last day of the meeting on climate agreements without much to show for it, delegates at the ongoing climate talks in Lima, Peru, have held their meeting far into the night on the last day of the meeting at an attempt to reach a conclusive agreement that would broker international signatures in December in Paris.

The talks was supposed to hold from December 1 to 12, but it held past the official closing time on the last day of the talks – just as an attempt to finalize issues that have rendered the UN climate summit significantly unproductive.

Country representatives listen to opening remarks at the start of the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties on Climate Change in Lima, Peru

The overall objective of the summit is to finalize a consensus agreement that would serve as the basis of the international covenant to be ratified by all countries willing to cut down on greenhouse gases in Paris, 2015. But a number of issues have made preparing this text a matter of much debate among delegates and negotiators.

The main problem causing some rift at the summit is the differentiation between rich and poor countries.

US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has cautioned that every country in the world is “still on a course leading to tragedy” in view of the menacing threats of global warming and its attendant effects on humanity. He therefore stated that no country would have a “free pass” at the summit and that issues pertaining to the deal is not an option but an urgent necessity. “I know this is difficult for developing nations. We have to remember that today more than half of emissions are coming from developing nations, so it is imperative that they act too.”

But this is what some countries, led by China, do not want to hear or agree with. They want to stand upon the 1992 UN framework convention on climate change which allows for “common but differentiated responsibilities.” These countries have a feeling that developed and rich countries want to circumvent the provisions of this convention, and draft texts introduced by the chairs of the talks appear to even water down original commitments to this end.

According to Brazil’s Antonio Marcondes, who voiced the position of developing nations calling themselves the G77, “This whole exercise is not meant to rewrite the convention, this is a firm basic position of the G77. We stand behind the differentiation, we stand behind ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’, these are issues we hold very strong and these are definite red lines.” He further went ahead to state that “We favor a transparent presentation of country issues, but we think that an ex-ante review next year would be an unnecessary effort. It would detract from the main goal of reaching Paris with a new agreement.”

Attended by 195 countries and running from December 1 to 12, the UN climate summit in Peru has ended, and hopefully conclusive of what individual countries had in mind before they attended the conference which forecasts the final convention by December 2015 in Paris, France.